André Deutsch, who has died aged 82, belonged to a breed of publishers that existed, and occasionally flourished, before accountants and computers took over - in an age when publishers were entrepreneurs of the imagination, seeking quality, proud of the influence and longevity of their discoveries, exultant if lucky enough to be associated with a genius.

He frequently came up with surprises during crises. His quite frequent mistakes stemmed from his being, as a foreigner, never quite sure of his status in the eyes of others.

He was swimming in a sea with different currents from those to be found in European publishing, with its respectful gravity - in contrast to the insular, post-war British scene, with its tendency to frivolity.

He was quick to sense a slight, suspicious with strangers, and unable to conceal a certain arrogance toward those less quick-witted than himself.

Born in Budapest, Deutsch was educated there and in Vienna. With the Anschluss, and because he was Jewish, he left for Zürich, where he had an uncle who eventually helped him get to England.

At the outbreak of the second world war, he was interned on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien, and a meeting there with a European publisher persuaded him to enter the profession.

When released in 1942, he went to work for Nicholson and Watson, transferred to the technical book and trade journal publisher Ernest Benn, where he became sales manager, and started his own company, Allan Wingate, in 1945.

He was backed by private investors and, having underestimated his capital needs, kept bringing new members on to the board. These tended to be public school or bridge party types, contemptuous of Deutsch's accented English and East European background. Anthony Gibb, son of historian Sir Philip, became chairman and, having his own publishing ambitions, ousted him.

In 1951, with help and advice from Stanley Rubinstein, the publishing solicitor, he started André Deutsch Ltd. At Wingate's, he had successfully published his compatriot George Mikes's light-hearted satire on the English, How To Be An Alien, with illustrations by Nicholas Bentley; the former remained with him as an author, the latter as a board member. Diana Athill joined as general editorial and managerial assistant.

Deutsch's big break came with the von Papen Memoirs, the diary of Hitler's most able diplomat, and he sold serial rights to a Sunday newspaper for £30,000, which made it a bestseller. He followed with other books from Germany, - he had a great advantage over his monoglot English rivals - but received some criticism for his willingness to publish books by Britain's recent enemy.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair he was a star, the British publisher that Europeans knew best. The prestige went to his head and he undertook to publish in English the official biography of the German President Theodor Heuss, who was unknown outside Germany. The president visited his stand at the fair, but the British sales were only to a few libraries.

Needing some bestsellers, Deutsch began to look to America, where refugees like himself were numerous in New York publishing, and came up with Norman Mailer's The Naked And The Dead, a soldier's account of the Korean War; what made it sell, however, was the soldier's expletive - printed throughout, however, as "fug".

American authors dominated the list for the next two decades, many of them becoming contemporary classics. At one point, again in financial difficulties, Deutsch sold himself out to Time-Life Books, with a contract to stay on as publisher, but the arrangement did not work and he bought himself out again.

When he felt the time had come to retire (and the 1980s were not a happy time for independent publishers, with the banks increasingly unhelpful), he accepted an offer from Tom Rosenthal. Deutsch expected to remain as a consultant, but soon found his presence was not welcome.

Deutsch never married, but had a close relationship with a sympathetic lady for many years. His main relaxation was skiing, until age and illness made it no longer possible. He received the OBE in 1989.

Frank Keating writes: Dear André. Think of a mid-European leprechaun and you've got the picture. He was already well into his 50s when he published my first two books. They were about cricket, of which he knew nothing, but he read the Guardian and had heard of Ian Botham.

The paper would pay my hotel bills for daily reports on England's 1980 tour of the West Indies, and André would stump up all travel expenses for the main wheeze - a spoof, ghosted autobiography by an imagined 17th member of the England party called Desmond (ie me), who would spill the beans on the tour.

The day before we left, André gave me my "expenses" - in the form of copies of personal letters he had already sent to, among others, Eric Williams, Forbes Burnham and Michael Manley, former black movement student authors of his, now prime ministers of respectively Trinidad, Guyana, and Jamaica.

I feared the worst publisher's double-cross. Not a bit of it. From day one in Trinidad, chauffeured cars were at my disposal, and the odd private plane. In return, I was fast into my stride with Another Bloody Day In Paradise - till the tour began to fall apart with the team being thrown out of Guyana on the back of South African apartheid and the death of England's manager Ken Barrington. Back home, André panicked. "Drop Desmond and play it straight," he wired.

Twelve months later, with another England team, this time in India, a beaming André arrived with some 30-odd copies of ABD in P and arranged a "launch" party at the pricey Taj Mahal in Bombay. When the time came to leave, a week or so later, all party charges had been referred to my bill - and dear old André was back in London.

But I loved him. I last saw him a couple of years ago, looking sad, hunched, lonely. "We should really do that spoof tour book again," he said - and his leprechaun's eyes were glistening with pleasure and anticipation once again.